Royals designate Jonathan Sanchez

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The Kansas City Royals designated Jonathan Sanchez for assignment on Tuesday, cutting the struggling starter one week after Melky Cabrera, the player they traded away to get the pitcher, was named MVP of the All-Star Game.

Sanchez was 1-6 with a 7.76 ERA in 12 starts. The left-hander, who threw a no-hitter against San Diego in 2009, gave up seven runs in 1 1/3 innings in a loss to Seattle on Monday. He gave up five runs and two homers in the first inning before retiring a batter. When Sanchez was pulled, he was booed unmercifully by the Kauffman Stadium crowd. The Royals announced the move before their game against the Seattle Mariners on Tuesday night.

The Royals sent Cabrera to the San Francisco Giants last November for Sanchez and minor league left-hander Ryan Verdugo in one of the worst trades in Royals' history.

“

You want them all to work out, but most of the time they don't, unfortunately. It's part of the business, you move on and you accept it. You continue to look for solutions.

”-- Royals GM Dayton Moore

"You want them all to work out, but most of the time they don't, unfortunately," Royals general manager Dayton Moore said Tuesday. "It's part of the business, you move on and you accept it. You continue to look for solutions.

"There's no need to spend a lot of time rehearsing what went wrong. You certainly analyze it, but don't beat yourself about it because this game moves on. You can't dwell on it. You can't get stuck on it. You've got to move forward."

While Cabrera is hitting .353 and leads the National League with 122 hits and 40 multihit games, Sanchez went winless in his final 11 starts with Kansas City.

"We just felt change was necessary at this point and time," Moore said. "It's just one of those things that didn't work out. The more he tried, the worse it came. It was evident that we needed to deflate the situation and move forward."

Sanchez allowed 114 baserunners -- 65 hits, 44 walks and five hit batters -- in 53 1/3 innings. He had not won since April 8, his first start of the season.

"We could see that he just wasn't making progress," Royals manager Ned Yost said. "There are a lot of reasons why. You can speculate why on a lot of different levels.

"It's still there with Jonathan. He's still got the stuff to be successful. For whatever reason, he just wasn't successful here. It just got to a point we needed to regroup for us and for him."

Verdugo, who was 6-2 with a 3.58 ERA with Triple-A Omaha, was recalled and started Tuesday night against Seattle in his big league debut.

In other roster moves, the Royals recalled right-hander Vin Mazzaro for the third time from Omaha, and optioned outfielder Jason Bourgeois to the Storm Chasers.